Opinion: 5 Letdowns of the New iPad - Is It Good Enough?

[Tab54o]

I just don't get the hype about tablets if they are cheap enough then yeah I see the usefulness to some people but for something that costs 400-600 dollars what a waste, small screen no keyboard. Id rather just get a small apu based laptop and be able to do so much more. Tablets are just so in between making them somewhat useless except to fart around on the web.

 

[Tab54o]

[citation][nom]NightLight[/nom]the word "meh" comes to mind...[/citation]

Ive been saying this same thing. What a lame idea holding up some 10 inch brick to take a picture. Real practical, NOT.

 

[danwat1234]

Yeah, they should have an option for a single platter 1.8" 5mm thick 250GB hard drive (like the Ipods), but that might require an increase of thickness in the chassis which wouldn't be good.

 

[obsama1]

I the CPU is 2x faster, and there's 4x pixels, that's 1/2 the performance of the iPad 2.

 

[tipoo]

I don't really care that its not quad core, I'm more curious about the RAM. I think 1GB is pretty certain, but I'll wait for some teardowns.

[citation][nom]obsama1[/nom]I the CPU is 2x faster, and there's 4x pixels, that's 1/2 the performance of the iPad 2.[/citation]
GPU performance, CPU is the same.

 

[Guest]

Wolfgang Gruener wrote: "I must admit that Nokia's recent 41MP phone camera announcement has left a lasting impression. I am wondering how those pictures would look with the iPad's retina display."

Answer: Those 41MP pictures would look like they're 10 times too large for the iPad's 2048x1536 pixel display. A 4MP camera's 2464 x 1632 pixels are already more than enough. Wolfgang, how can you call yourself a tech writer and perpetuate the ignorance that’s forcing companies to rage the Megapixel War. Nokia's phone is a stunt to get free advertising. They know uninformed "tech writers" like you will gush over 41MP because a bigger number is better, right? No! High megapixel sensors pay a huge tradeoff. That Nokia phone will have horrible low light capabilities and its photos will have to be downsized causing hideous banding on patterns in the image. People take photos on devices to send to other devices or post on the web. A single megapixel is enough for that. Camera manufacturer, Nikon, just announced their new top-of-the-line D4 professional camera with "only" 16.2MP even though their lower end D800 camera has over 36MP. Nikon knows that the highest-end professional photographers are, unfortunately, the only ones not fooled by high megapixels. Wolfgang, as a writer who influences tens of thousands of readers you should be educating consumers, not misinforming them. Device manufacturers could be working on 1MP cameras that could take stunning low-noise photos in a candle-lit room if they weren’t having to pander to uninformed consumers in the senseless Megapixel War. Wolfgang, please get on Google and take the 5 minutes necessary to learn everything you need to know about how many megapixels are needed for photos that are going to be viewed on an electronic device or printed to any size you want. Oh wait, are those photos taken on your phone intended to be printed on a larger-than-life-sized poster? Then those 41MP photos are only twice the size you need.

 

[del35]

A rear camera is imperative if you want to digitize material like class note or lecture notes... This is precisely what I use the rear facing camera in my Toshiba Thrive for. It is wonderful for that and I dont have to carry tons of paper around....

 

[ap3x]

[citation][nom]Brock787[/nom]Wolfgang Gruener wrote: "I must admit that Nokia's recent 41MP phone camera announcement has left a lasting impression. I am wondering how those pictures would look with the iPad's retina display."Answer: Those 41MP pictures would look like they're 10 times too large for the iPad's 2048x1536 pixel display. A 4MP camera's 2464 x 1632 pixels are already more than enough. Wolfgang, how can you call yourself a tech writer and perpetuate the ignorance that’s forcing companies to rage the Megapixel War. Nokia's phone is a stunt to get free advertising. They know uninformed "tech writers" like you will gush over 41MP because a bigger number is better, right? No! High megapixel sensors pay a huge tradeoff. That Nokia phone will have horrible low light capabilities and its photos will have to be downsized causing hideous banding on patterns in the image. People take photos on devices to send to other devices or post on the web. A single megapixel is enough for that. Camera manufacturer, Nikon, just announced their new top-of-the-line D4 professional camera with "only" 16.2MP even though their lower end D800 camera has over 36MP. Nikon knows that the highest-end professional photographers are, unfortunately, the only ones not fooled by high megapixels. Wolfgang, as a writer who influences tens of thousands of readers you should be educating consumers, not misinforming them. Device manufacturers could be working on 1MP cameras that could take stunning low-noise photos in a candle-lit room if they weren’t having to pander to uninformed consumers in the senseless Megapixel War. Wolfgang, please get on Google and take the 5 minutes necessary to learn everything you need to know about how many megapixels are needed for photos that are going to be viewed on an electronic device or printed to any size you want. Oh wait, are those photos taken on your phone intended to be printed on a larger-than-life-sized poster? Then those 41MP photos are only twice the size you need.[/citation]

Brock, seriously....Thank You for that. 5-8 MP on a phone is more than enough. Give me a great CMOS sensor and create innovative integrated lense solutions before you think about going beyond 8 MP. How about leaving it at 5 mp and building in light field capabilities. Would be perfect for a small handheld device.

 

[del35]

One thing is sure, I have no use for the new iPad. I want lots connectivity, a micro sd card slot, hdmi port and to be able to surf the web with no restriction like lack of flash and java support. I absolutely have no use for such a high screen resolution and think it a total waste unless I was editing high quality image files with software like Photoshop which can't run in tablets.

 

[tipoo]

[citation][nom]Brock787[/nom]Wolfgang Gruener wrote: "......[/citation]

The Pureview camera is by default set to 5MP. It uses 7-8 pixels to average data out to get super accurate information for each pixel. Its not actually set to 41MP by default like people seem to think, they didn't go for raw megapixels here, its actually rather clever. I think you can set it up to 38, but that's just for experimentation, the actual shooting is downsampled to 5MP.

The sensor is about 16 times larger than the iPhone 4S or new iPad.

 

[ap3x]

[citation][nom]del35[/nom]One thing is sure, I have no use for the new iPad. I want lots connectivity, a micro sd card slot, hdmi port and to be able to surf the web with no restriction like lack of flash and java support. I absolutely have no use for such a high screen resolution and think it a total waste unless I was editing high quality image files with software like Photoshop which can't run in tablets.[/citation]

Lol, your going to hate this.

http/itunes.apple.com/us/app/adobe-photoshop-touch/id495716481?mt=8

whoooopshhhh.......Photoshop for the iPad. lol

 

[The-Darkening]

[citation][nom]Brock787[/nom]Wolfgang, how can you call yourself a tech writer and perpetuate the ignorance that’s forcing companies to rage the Megapixel War.[/citation]

What about YOU reading how the 41 MP camera works? And great, another "We just need 640 Kb". Try to print a 5MP photo and then try again with 12 MP. Lenses are important but everything works in conjunction.

 

[rcmaniac25]

On the one line "touch-sensitive bezel". It's not like anyone has done that before...

Sent from my BlackBerry PlayBook.

 

[Marco925]

[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]Good article, but I'm also not impressed with this new iPad. Granted, I'm a little biased against Apple considering everything, but the only things going for it are it's display and processors. Those are very important, but not everything. I have to agree with author, it still leaves disappointments. However, I may never understand why these tablets can't get multiple MicroSD card ports so you could really fill them up on storage capacity. It wouldn't take a lot of space, it should be considered by someone.[/citation]
Yeah, ASUS.

 

[mr_wobbles]

You all act like it wouldn't be a letdown to begin with. The sheep shall flock, and the best you can do is inform them that they are paying 200-300$ extra for a bitten fruit on their "so innovative" tablet.

 

[nekromobo]

[citation][nom]tipoo[/nom]The Pureview camera is by default set to 5MP. It uses 7-8 pixels to average data out to get super accurate information for each pixel. Its not actually set to 41MP by default like people seem to think, they didn't go for raw megapixels here, its actually rather clever. I think you can set it up to 38, but that's just for experimentation, the actual shooting is downsampled to 5MP. The sensor is about 16 times larger than the iPhone 4S or new iPad.[/citation]

It is 41MP or 38MP depending if you want to use 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratio. It surely is no stunt, just go see the photos it takes. People are flaming the camera without checking the facts.

 

[watcha]

[citation][nom]obsama1[/nom]I the CPU is 2x faster, and there's 4x pixels, that's 1/2 the performance of the iPad 2.[/citation]

Don't be ridiculous.

The CPU doesn't have to run 4x as fast to power a screen which has 4x as many pixels. That's mainly handled by the GPU, which is (Apple claims), 4x faster. This means it can run games at 4x higher the quality (on the new display) without sacrificing the 60 fps.

[citation][nom]tipoo[/nom]CPU is the same.[/citation]

Do you have benchmarks to evidence this?

 

[Vladislaus]

[citation][nom]watcha[/nom]Don't be ridiculous.The CPU doesn't have to run 4x as fast to power a screen which has 4x as many pixels. That's mainly handled by the GPU, which is (Apple claims), 4x faster. This means it can run games at 4x higher the quality (on the new display) without sacrificing the 60 fps.Do you have benchmarks to evidence this?[/citation]
Actually Apple says that the GPU on the new iPad is twice faster than the one on the iPad 2, not four times faster. And it makes some sense since the CPU is about the same and the only difference in the GPU is that it has twice the number of cores.

 

[watcha]

[citation][nom]Vladislaus[/nom]Actually Apple says that the GPU on the new iPad is twice faster than the one on the iPad 2, not four times faster. And it makes some sense since the CPU is about the same and the only difference in the GPU is that it has twice the number of cores.[/citation]

Yep you're right, they claim 4x faster than Tegra 3, which is 2x faster than iPad 2.

The CPU may have a different clock speed, so it could be faster.

 

[halcyon]

I just got an iPad 2 that I'm quite happy with (probably because of my bad experience with screen defects of 5 (yes FIVE) Asus Transformer Primes). It'll be very telling if Apple can sell such a high resolution screen on the iPad but Asus can't even do 1280x800 without a bunch of screen defects. ...it'd be very telling indeed.